


if the oceans die

by Glitter_Lisp



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22250287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitter_Lisp/pseuds/Glitter_Lisp
Summary: For two long weeks she lost herself in the waves, felt every drop of water and every grain of sand. For a time, she forgot that she was only halfway a part of the sea.Finding the bones was what reminded her of her place on land.
Kudos: 17





	if the oceans die

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I just................... have some feelings. About Uma. And the entire concept of the Isle.
> 
> TW for........ I mean, she finds a mass grave.

Uma had heard the ocean singing to her from the time she was born. She didn’t know where it came from, not for a long time, didn’t even know that not everyone heard the crashing, roaring music of it behind every conversation, every shout, every clatter and footstep. It would take her a long time to recognize that her heart beat in time with the waves.

Getting in the water for the first time as a kid felt like returning to a home she had forgotten after a journey she hadn’t known she was on.

Getting in the water outside of the barrier?

Gil thought she forgot about them. He wasn’t right, but he wasn’t entirely wrong, either; for two long weeks she lost herself in the waves, felt every drop of water and every grain of sand. For a time, she forgot that she was only halfway a part of the sea.

Finding the bones was what reminded her of her place on land. The Isle was small, and the population had more than doubled in the twenty years since its creation. There wasn’t enough space. There wasn’t enough food. There was hardly enough air.

They discovered early on that dead things could pass through the barrier. It was how Auradon got their old and rotting food through to them. It was how the de facto leaders of the Isle kept them all alive: by sending the dead away. Standard practice was water burial; take a boat out as far as it would go, fling the body through the barrier. Some people were burned before they went, some people hidden on the barges and sent back to Auradon as a gift for their benevolent king. Some bodies were never found.

But everything found its way to the water in the end. Uma, half-delirious with the wild, breathtaking freedom of the open ocean, found that end.

The moon and the wind and the entire world kept the ocean alive and moving, waves and tides and currents. It was beautiful, it was purest sort of freedom, but it wasn’t safe or easy or graceful. The waves swelled, the tides spun, the currents crashed against one another like invisible armies.

One of those armies was stationed a few miles away from the Isle. There was a deep canyon, full of jagged rocks, broken monuments to past adventurers and, at the bottom, bodies. The currents twisted in such a way that they pulled detritus from the Isle into the hole and left them to rot, snagged on coral and sunken ships.

It was lovely in a way. It was horrifying in many, many others.

Once she realized what she was seeing, Uma had spent two frantic days checking for fresh bodies. She was in charge of her crew, the undisputed leader. With her gone, it only made sense that there would have been a power struggle.

She only found one, and he wasn’t one of hers. Some minor henchman of Frollo’s, from the look of him. Everyone else was a skeleton or nearly there. The relief hit her so hard that she sank to the floor, tentacles limp and lazy, hands over her mouth.

Harry. Gil. It must have been them. Harry had the faith and Gil the determination to keep everyone together in her absence. They had taken care of her crew from the inside. She would do the same from out here.

She stared at the graveyard until her vision went grey and the water around her started to boil with the force of her rage. How dare they. How _dare_ they, the shiny, glittering people in that shiny, glittering kingdom, where their people were entombed in ivy-covered towers and sparkly glass shrines, while hers were left in the sea to be eaten by fish and time?

Uma was the daughter of Ursula the sea witch. She had magic. She had power. She had her song and her anger, she had a lifetime of misery and squalor, she had a strength that the people of Auradon couldn’t even imagine.

She had the ocean and all of its bodies.

Auradon went out of its way to forget the Isle, to lock it out of sight and turn the people there into ghost stories and fairytales. Uma would not do the same. She would never let herself look away from the things they had done to her and her people. She would never forget it or ignore it, let alone _forgive_ it. Ben had offered her a chance. 

She wouldn’t do the same. 


End file.
